North American Chess Association http://www.nachess.org/component/wordpress/ Sat, 01 Oct 2011 17:55:57 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.7.1.1 en hourly 1 testing the update #comments Sat, 01 Oct 2011 16:44:48 +0000 Alexandru_72096 testing the update

]]> 2nd North American Amatuer Open kicks off tonight! #comments Fri, 04 Mar 2011 11:29:18 +0000 Sevan A. Muradian The second installment of the  North American Amateur  series kicks off tonight. Last month 22 players participated despite being Super Bowl weekend! As of this writing we have 18 pre-registered players ready to do battle. Nearly half of the field does not have a FIDE rating and will be searching for their performance norms on their way to getting an established rating.

Round 1 begins at 7pm tonight at the North Shore Chess Center and the tournament continues throughout the weekend. Everyone is welcome to stop by and watch the action.

Best Regards,

Sevan A. Muradian, Founder
North American Chess Association
International Arbiter and International Organizer

]]> Final Results - 1st North American Amateur Open #comments Tue, 08 Feb 2011 13:05:15 +0000 Sevan A. Muradian A long weekend came to a close as we wrapped up the 1st North American Amateur Open. 22 players (plus myself as a house player) came out to support the maiden voyage of this event series. From the mood of the players they were quite happy. A serious time control, a friendly environment, and highly competitive play.

At the very end we had a three-way tie for 1st place between IM Florin Felecan, Sam Schmakel, and Gavin McClanahan (in tie break order) with a score of 4/5. Sam was the only player that was able to scalp not one, but both master scalps. He first took out NM Jon L. Burgess and in the final round took out IM Florin Felecan. Aside from oodles of rating points, he nabbed for himself a copy of the Complete Works of Bobby Fischer and free entry next month to the 2nd North American Amateur Open.

5 of the players also scored FIDE rating performance norms towards their established FIDE ratings:

  • Matthew Stevens - 5 game performance norm (needs 4 more)
  • Tony Brown - 5 game performance norm (he now has 8 games total and needs 1 more for his established FIDE rating)
  • Dean Arond - 5 game performance norm (needs 4 more)
  • David Peng - 4 game performance norm (needs 5 more)
  • Bernard Parham - 3 game performance norm (needs 8 more)

Final Standings - 1st North American Amateur Open

# Name FIDE Rating Rd 1 Rd 2 Rd 3 Rd 4 Rd 5 Total
1 IM Florin Felecan 2392 W10 W5 W3 W9 L2 4.0
2 Sam A Schmakel 1945 D18 W14 D15 W4 W1 4.0
3 Gavin Mc Clanahan 1862 W19 W13 L1 W12 W7 4.0
4 NM Jon L Burgess 2217 W23 D15 W11 L2 W9 3.5
5 Christoph Girardo 1780 W8 L1 D13 W18 W16 3.5
6 Krzysztof Flaga 2048 D14 W16 L9 W17 W11 3.5
7 Matthew Pullin 1942 H— D12 W10 W15 L3 3.0
8 Bernard Parham unr. L5 L10 W23 W20 W12 3.0
9 Tony R Brown unr. D22 W17 W6 L1 L4 2.5
10 Vytaut Vitkauskas 1718 L1 W8 L7 D16 W18 2.5
11 Jeff Britt 1943 H— W18 L4 W13 L6 2.5
12 David Tianji Peng unr. D17 D7 W21 L3 L8 2.0
13 Matthew J Stevens unr. W20 L3 D5 L11 D14 2.0
14 Abe Sun 1659 D6 L2 L17 W19 D13 2.0
15 Dmitri Sergatskov unr. W21 D4 D2 L7 U— 2.0
16 Pawel Marcinek 1675 H— L6 W19 D10 L5 2.0
17 Fredric S Cohen 1742 D12 L9 W14 L6 H— 2.0
18 Dean Arond unr. D2 L11 W20 L5 L10 1.5
19 Theodor Mercer Jr unr. L3 D20 L16 L14 H— 1.0
20 Joe Delay 1731 L13 D19 L18 L8 H— 1.0
21 Dimitri Kosteris 1827 L15 W23 L12 U— U— 1.0
22 Sevan A Muradian 1904 D9 U— U— D23 U— 1.0
23 Charles Craigmile 1687 L4 L21 L8 D22 U— 0.5
]]> Day 2 of the 1st NA Amateur Open concludes #comments Sun, 06 Feb 2011 16:02:24 +0000 Sevan A. Muradian And a long day it was. It seems that we always have 1 game that goes the bitter distance!

Round 2 completed relatively quickly, while Round 3 saw a tooth and nail endgame battle between young gun Gavin McClanahan and IM Florin Felecan. A rook and pawn endgame that lasted 78 moves until Florin capitalized on some endgame mistakes by Gavin.

A big upset of the day was Tony Brown rated 1615 USCF who took down Expert Kris Flaga who is rated 2014. 399 point difference worked against Tony but that did not deter him from his goal. Next round he takes on tournament leader IM Florin Felecan.

I will post the games between McClanahan-Felecan and Brown-Flaga later today if possible.

1st North American Amateur Open - Standings after 3 rounds

# Name FIDE Rating Rd 1 Rd 2 Rd 3 Total
1 Florin Felecan 2392 W16 W9 W5 3.0
2 Tony R Brown unr. D22 W10 W11 2.5
3 Jon L Burgess 2217 W23 D4 W12 2.5
4 Dmitri Sergatskov unr. W17 D3 D7 2.0
5 Gavin Mc Clanahan 1862 W20 W14 L1 2.0
6 David Tianji Peng unr. D10 D8 W17 2.0
7 Sam A Schmakel 1945 D13 W19 D4 2.0
8 Matthew Pullin 1942 H— D6 W16 2.0
9 Christoph Girardo 1780 W18 L1 D14 1.5
10 Fredric S Cohen 1742 D6 L2 W19 1.5
11 Krzysztof Flaga 2048 D19 W15 L2 1.5
12 Jeff Britt 1943 H— W13 L3 1.5
13 Dean Arond unr. D7 L12 W21 1.5
14 Matthew J Stevens unr. W21 L5 D9 1.5
15 Pawel Marcinek 1675 H— L11 W20 1.5
16 Vytaut Vitkauskas 1718 L1 W18 L8 1.0
17 Dimitri Kosteris 1827 L4 W23 L6 1.0
18 Bernard Parham unr. L9 L16 W23 1.0
19 Abe Sun 1659 D11 L7 L10 0.5
20 Theodor Mercer Jr unr. L5 D21 L15 0.5
21 Joe Delay 1731 L14 D20 L13 0.5
22 Sevan A Muradian 1904 D2 U— U— 0.5
23 Charles Craigmile 1687 L3 L17 L18 0.0
]]> 1st North American Amateur Open Kicks Off! #comments Sat, 05 Feb 2011 17:32:34 +0000 Sevan A. Muradian On Friday night 22 players battled the frigid weather to converge at the North Shore Chess Center to take part in the 1st North American Amateur Open, some traveling as far as 3 hours away to participate. A tournament open only to those with an established FIDE (international) rating or a US Chess Federation rating above 1599, it provides an opportunity to those without an international rating to achieve one and to everyone an opportunity to continue honing their chess skills.

For the maiden voyage of the event series, we were fortunate to have two local chess masters graciously offer themselves up as targets. International Master Florin Felecan and National Master Jon L. Burgess, current and former members respectively of the Chicago Blaze US Chess League team, joined in the test of skills.

While no cash prizes in the event, “Chess Master Scalping” prizes are available throughout all rounds. Any of the 20 non-masters who successfully scalps (beats) either of the masters will receive a copy of  Bobby Fischer: The Career and Complete Games of the American World Chess Champion. Should any skilled scalp seeker pocket a scalp from each of the masters, they will receive in addition to the book, free entry to next months edition of this tournament series.

Utilizing a favored time control known as 90 30 or all moves in 90 minutes plus 30 seconds added after each move, the participants began slugging it out at 7pm. At the end of a long night (11:15pm), a number of the young guns in the tournament showed their mettle and made it known they are a force to be reckoned with.

Results from Round 1:

  • Vitkauskas (1718) vs Felecan (2392): 0 - 1
  • Burgess (2217) vs Craigmile (1687): 1 - 0
  • Sun (1659) vs Flaga (2048): 1/2 - 1/2 (Sun is one of the 4 young guns)
  • Schmakel (1945) vs Arond (unr): 1/2 - 1/2
  • Brown (unr) vs Muradian( 1904): 1/2 - 1/2
  • McClanahan (1862) vs Mercer Jr (unr): 1/2 - 1/2 (McClanahan is one of the 4 young guns, Mercer’s USCF rating is 1811)
  • Sergatskov (unr) vs Kosteris (1827): 1 - 0
  • Girardo (1780) vs Parham (unr): 1- 0 (Parham drove 3 hours to come play!)
  • Peng (unr) vs Cohen (1742): 1/2 - 1/2 (Peng is one of the 4 young guns)
  • Delay (1731) vs Stevens (unr): 0 - 1 (Stevens is one of the 4 young guns)

Round 2 will begin at 12pm on Saturday Feb 5. Spectators are welcome.

Best Regards,

–Sevan

]]> New FIDE Ratings! #comments Sat, 01 Jan 2011 15:43:04 +0000 Sevan A. Muradian Happy New Year to everyone - here are the official January 2011 FIDE ratings for the players from the 1st North American Amateur Closed:

Vince Hart - 1933
Pawel Marcinek - 1675
Charles Dobrolovny - 1743
Dragomic Vecanski - 1820
Paul Seet - 1880

Charles Craigmile - 1687
Christopher Girardo - 1780
M Barrie Richmond - 1873
Matthew Pullin - 1942
Mike Mei - 1947
Vito Vitkauskas - 1718

Congrats to all and I hope you come out to play in the 1st NA Amateur Open in Feb - see http://www.nachess.org/events for more details!

Best Regards,

Sevan A. Muradian, Founder
North American Chess Association
International Arbiter and International Organizer

]]> New Tournament Registration Software #comments Sat, 04 Dec 2010 02:16:48 +0000 Sevan A. Muradian Some of you may have noticed that on my website at http://www.nachess.org I have a new registration system for tournaments where you enter in your USCF ID and it auto populates your name and rating from the most recently published supplement.

I was entering the names of the people into SwissSys (more on this later) and at least 5 players came up as expired in the Dec 2010 golden database. I entered them anyways and then went to check the USCF MSA, only to find that they are current.

Mistake in the Golden Database? Mistake in MSA? How about neither! The tournament registration system won’t allow you to register for the event if your membership is expired! They would receive an error preventing them from moving forward because of an expired membership (or an invalid id). So they would have to go to the USCF site and update their membership, and then register for the tournament.

Now could this be a barrier and cause some people not to register as they would have to go through the hassle of going to another site for USCF membership? Perhaps, but it also saves the organizer the hassle of tracking the player down during the tournament to collect.

The code to to the tournament registration is currently available for use by anyone if they register a tournament on the NACA website. I’ll soon be making it available for people to place into their own Joomla based website (it’s a module that I took and had modified). Shortly I will make some YouTube videos on the use of the registration system as well from an organizers point of view.

Now regarding SwissSys. It’s been awhile since I’ve used it, as I’ve wanted to support a local Chicago North Shore / IL business, but no more. I was amazed at the clarity of SwissSys and the raw speed of entering new registrations into it. Not to mention that when I email or call the creator of SwissSys (Thad Suits) I actually get an answer back from him within a few hours. Tom Doan never gets back which is utterly annoying.

Now another benefit for me personally with SwissSys is that it can use Berger tables for round robin pairings which is the FIDE pairing method for RR (USCF uses Crenshaw). This saves me the trouble of having to manually doing pairings in the pairing software (which I have to do in WinTD), not to mention that it helps out Walter Brown at the USCF because SwissSys can export Krause formatted results which are necessary for submission to FIDE’s rating server.

So needless to say, I’m throwing my support, for what it’s worth, behind Thad and SwissSys for an utterly superior software program over WinTD. The TD training sessions that we will begin in January at the North Shore Chess Center will utilize SwissSys and not WinTD also.

Best Regards,

Sevan A. Muradian, Founder
North American Chess Association
International Arbiter and International Organizer

]]> 1st North American Amateur Closed - Final Standings #comments Mon, 29 Nov 2010 02:22:03 +0000 Sevan A. Muradian Final standings as follows:

Group A

1st Place - Matt Pullin - 7.5/9

2nd-3rd Place - Barrie Richmond and Steven Craig Miller - 6/9

4th Place - George Stone - 5/9

5th-7th Place - Mike Mei, Brian Villarreal, Dimitri Kosteris - 4.5/9

8th-9th Place - Vito Vitkauskas and Christopher Girardo - 2.5/9

10th Place - Charles Craigmile - 2/9

Group B

1st - 3rd - Aakaash Meduri, Sam Schmakel, and James Wei - 6/9

4th - 5th - Paul Seet and Vincent Hart - 5.5/9

6th - Zhaozhi Li - 4.5/9

7th - Dragomir Vecanski - 4/9

8th - Charles Dobrovolny - 3/9

9th - Abe Sun - 2.5/9

10th - Pawel Marcinek - 2/9

Games in PGN will be available tomorrow, along with the USCF rating report, and a final / complete crosstable.

Best Regards,

Sevan A. Muradian, Founder
North American Chess Association
International Arbiter and International Organizer

]]> 1st North American Amateur Closed - Round 9 Results #comments Mon, 29 Nov 2010 02:13:03 +0000 Sevan A. Muradian Results of Round 9:

Group A

Miller - Kosteris: 1 - 0

Villarreal - Richmond: 1/2 - 1/2

Vitkauskas - Pullin: 1/2 - 1/2

Stone - Mei: 1 - 0

Craigmile - Girardo: 1 - 0

Group B

Marcinek - Vecanski: 0  - 1

Sun - Hart: 0 - 1

Meduri - Li: 1 - 0

Schmakel - Seet: 1/2 - 1/2

Wei - Dobrovolny: 1 - 0

Best Regards,

Sevan A. Muradian, Founder
North American Chess Association
International Arbiter and International Organizer

]]> 1st North American Amateur Closed - Round 8 Results #comments Sun, 28 Nov 2010 23:10:32 +0000 Sevan A. Muradian Results of Round 8:

Group A

Girardo - Stone: 0 - 1

Mei - Vitkauskas: 1 - 0

Pullin - Villarreal: 1 - 0

Richmond - Miller: 1/2- 1/2

Kosteris - Craigmile: 1 - 0

Group B

Dobrovolny - Schmakel: 0 - 1

Seet - Meduri: 1 - 0

Li - Sun: 1 - 0

Hart - Marcinek: 1 - 0

Vecanski - Wei: 0 - 1

Final round began at 5pm Chicago time.

Best Regards,

Sevan A. Muradian, Founder
North American Chess Association
International Arbiter and International Organizer

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